Linking words, connectors & discourse markers

Linking words, discourse markers and connectors may not be exactly the same in grammatical terms, for some are conjunctions while others are adverbs or even prepositions. Yet, they have something in common: they all are transition words or phrases that help us organise our oral speech or written texts. They bind the sentences and the ideas logically, making the text clearer to the listener or reader.

A text without them may seem illogical or uncohesive. However, we should not overuse them, either.Otherwise, the text will seem to pretentious. As you can see, in this first lines, we can already find quite a few.